Harder To Breathe
by GcArchAngel
Summary: AU. Oneshot. The arrival of a new and difficult student calls for Xavier to ask for reinforcements.


This is a movie AU. I have yet to see the third film, so this story will have no relevance and little reference to the movies.

I don't own X-Men, or any Marvel comic characters, but I did create Alyson and her sister, and any extended family of them.

And as to avoid any unnecessary confusion now, anything in bold is telepathic communication, italic is flashback moments, and the underline is simply the sound.

* * *

It was dark and cool, the water rippled around a shadowed figure that entered the moonlit pool. The reflection of the clear night sky cast an eerie white glow upon the girl as she looked up to the moon as she waded deeper into the dark water.

"_There is something seriously psychologically wrong with that girl, Charles," Professor Hank McCoy said to the founder of the Xavier Institute for Gifted Youngsters. Gifted being mutated._

"_I understand what you are saying Henry, but I believe that it is not what you may have originally believed it to be," Professor Xavier responded._

"_Professor!" Scott Summers said charging into the Professor's office. "She's in the pool."_

She inhaled deeply, finally ducking her head under the water, as she paddled down to the depths of the twenty foot deep, Olympic sized swimming pool. As she reached the bottom, her ears popping with the pressure, she sat cross legged, releasing air, letting the bubbles soar to the surface as she attempted to lessen her buoyancy. Opening her eyes, she peered around the darkened pool.

"_Alyson!" A voice of one of the Professors called out as Xavier, Hank and Scott all made their way out to the out door pool._

_There, sitting at the bottom of the deep end, Alyson Bronson, one of the newest editions to the school, remained underwater. Her wings seemed disoriented and unrecognizable with the natural rippling of the water._

"_Colossus," Xavier said to one of the older students who were outside._

_Colossus stood up and nodded his head over at the professor, walking over to the edge of the pool and lowering his body into the water. As he walked further and further, rapidly approaching Alyson, he allowed his body to be concealed in its metal covering._

_The teachers only stood looking upon in horror, hoping for the best._

**Alyson**, a voice called out in her head. She closed her eyes and rolled them around in her head.

**Alyson**, the voice continued more persistent**. I know you're in the pool. What are you doing?**

Alyson snorted and smirked beneath the water. **I'm meditating, do you mind? **She sassed back to Jean Grey in her head.

**Are you trying to drown yourself?**

**No, I'll surface for air soon**, she replied and felt the pinch and stretch of her skin as the edge of her wings began to cut themselves out of her back, and so not to spill too much blood and skin in the pool, she took her time in releasing them instead of her standard, rip and fly.

No, this process was slower, more painful, yet less bruising. She was meditating, and training herself not to feel the pain of letting them come out and go in. And there was just something about water's resistance whenever she trying to aid herself in surfacing. It made it all the more fun.

**Alyson, get out of the water. There is a thunderstorm fast approaching.**

**No, **she answered simply, sounding more aggravated in her head**. Let Professor Monroe deal with the weather.** She furrowed her brow in concentration as the wings lethargically pressed out of the skin in her back, tearing it open along the same line, like a well known phrase. They pulled out, fully before a whoosh in the water allowed them to fully expand, showing her wingspan and arching her back, she cracked her newly realigned spine. Her wings allowed her more balance in the water, instead of releasing oxygen to stay under; they flapped slowly, in reverse, allowing her to stay under longer.

Lightning streaked across the sky above her, lighting up the pool, and she rose a skeptically eye upward toward the sky.

_As she sat under, feeling utter peace and tranquility in the frozen atmosphere that surrounded her, she felt a thud and heard the water rippling around her. Suddenly, a powerful and cold metal object latched itself unto her arm. She screamed, releasing all of her oxygen in the struggle as it began to drag her back to the shallow end; she kicked it hard, only injuring her ankles, shins and knees in the process._

_The cold metal object soon faded to a warm flesh and the both of them, a semi-conscious Alyson and a distressed Piotr Rasputin floated to the surface as he swam to get her to the ledge, where Scott and Hank lifted her out of the pool, laying the soaking girl in the sun._

_Then, she stopped breathing._

**Alyson,** a new voice called. Old, reassuring, Professor Xavier himself. **Please, you need to surface and get out. Storm cannot control this intense of a tempest.**

**You're lying! **She recoiled in her mind.** You're the mighty X-Men! Nothing can stop-**

"NO!" Xavier called out. "Jean! Get her out of there!" he called over to the school's resident telekinetic.

Alas, it was too late, lightning had struck the pool, and Alyson was still underwater.

_They had rushed her to the medical lab, deep beneath the school's exterior. She lay on a gurney, completely motionless as Jean Grey and Hank McCoy tried desperately to revive her._

She was convulsing now, her nerves themselves fried. She wasn't even conscious to know what was going on. But this time, Professor Xavier sat hear her head, trying to calm the jumping and twisting nerves. Through no fault of their own, they were in this predicament.

"_Have you called him?" Logan said as he stood next to the Professor, looking upon the form of the small girl._

"_Yes," the Professor replied. "Shortly before we discovered where she was. He accepted the position, but he does not think that he'd qualified for it," he smiled knowingly._

"_How can he not be-" Logan began to reply when Alyson took her first breath back in the land of the living. "He was just like her," he finished his sentence as if it were a distant memory that evaded him as soon as her stumbled near it._

"He's here," Xavier said, turning to Ororo, who was standing near the exit. "Would you mind welcoming our new professor? I would do so myself but, as you can see," he trailed off and Ororo interrupted him politely before he could finish.

"Don't worry about it Professor, I will let him in," she smiled and turned, leaving the medical lab.

"_Hey you," a thick brogue called to the girl lying on the bed._

_Alyson looked up to see two figures in her room, well, her twin sister Morgan was standing near the foot of her bed, her half-brother Kael was leaning in the doorway._

"_Hey," she replied, her voice sounding weak in contrast to her attitude and previous actions._

"_What have you gotten yourself into this time, Dagger?" Kael asked._

"_Nothing Chaos," she glared back. "They just won't let me meditate," she frowned looking away._

"_Well considering where you do it," Kael scolded._

"_I can see why," Morgan finished for him, smiling a small sympathetic smile at her sister. _

After a short while, Alyson recovered, her body stopped convulsing, her vitals stabilized, yet she remained unconscious.

"So that's her, huh?" a deep voice called from the hallway. He peered in through the observational glass upon the small sleeping girl.

"Yeah bub, just you watch," another voice said.

"'Just watch' what? Logan?" the first voice called as his companion began to walk away.

"Watch Wings, you'll see," he said turning to look at him. A strange gestured passed over Logan's face, as if he wasn't sure whether to wink at the young man, or to give him a stern fatherly look. Shrugging it off he walked away, leaving the new teacher to observe his most difficult, most challenging and most promising student.


End file.
